Paolo Conte
Elegia

An album out of time, from time and times. Yes, because Paolo Conte is the proven proof that time is mostly a fiction, and that the false progressivism that permeates music in recent decades is often, more than anything, a smoke screen. What were we supposed to ask of Conte? That after ten years of silence (relative: live albums, reimaginings of hits, and a never-ending tour weren't exactly lacking...) he returns with an electronic album? That he makes a pandering album of duets with young artists, from Subsonica to Pausini, to dare the worst? That he abandons jazz and chamber music that he loves so much to create a purely singer-songwriter album, perhaps with excellent collaborations? No. None of this...: he made a Paolo Conte album. Which, if you think about it, is the most outrageous and brazen challenge to the times he could ever have conceived.

An album conceived not to be understood, or to be understood by a few, and almost certainly all over thirty. What...? Does he dare not to take as a point of reference – artistically little and economically much... – the sacred decade between twenty and thirty? Yes. And so here he is, sly, alcoholic, smoky, simian, and unsteady as ever, writing stylistically perfect and highly inspired lyrics, crafting music more chamber-like than usual, but always with an eye on "his" jazz, which is then swing, certainly more akin and affectionate to Chick Webb than Miles Davis.
Always there, and we imagine him with a notebook in hand, in a hotel room in France, with the rain outside, or in his home in Monferrato (and it doesn't change much), perhaps on the veranda, waiting for Gong Ho, the spirit of inspiration, to visit him. And for these thirteen beautiful tracks, evidently, Ging Ho did not leave him alone.

Elegia, the track giving its name to the album, is a circular song, with a pleasantly obsessive verse, like Le Chic Et Le Charme from many years ago, and it's one of his most beautiful songs ever, without going into a disquisition that, no matter how well done, could not help but be belittling. Then San Francisco is mediated Fellinian-style into overwhelming and personal visions. "Very far" is "beyond Milan" and it seems unnecessary to add anything. He returns to Mocambo, for a fourth part of a saga we thought was over and which, pleasantly, is not. Then it speaks of elephant sleep, of India, of a Chinese house, of the Kingdom of Tango, and so on... all things difficult to describe. If you don't already know, suffice it to say that these are dreamy visions, ethereal and eternal, timeless, where everything is perfect and contributes to packaging a beautiful work, which one might describe as "of yesteryears," if the definition were not, fundamentally, banal and moreover the object of too many possible misunderstandings. And Conte is always there, there where there was Novecento, where there was Una Faccia In Prestito, but also Un Gelato Al Limone, Aguaplano..., and all the others, but not where there was that dream of Razmataz, a dream that, like all dreams, would have been better if it had remained so. The Genius is not at fault for being consistent with himself: he deserves credit for it.

No one – least of all me – expected him to return, and to return with such a beautiful album. I must admit to having mentally placed him, several times, alongside Lucio and Faber, among those who have given us so much and could not give us anything more, forgetting that the one traveling through the theaters of Europe was a musician, and still an author, wonderfully alive. To identify and unite, one sentence from the album is enough. It happens that we are all on the same team.
We want the Indians... we don't want love...